Every year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, I conduct a spiritual year-end review. It makes sense to me to do this. It’s kind of intuitive, so I roll with it. I’m already thinking about the year gone by to count my blessings, and to appreciate the growth and expansion 2019 brought.

I do a year-end review for each of my businesses. It helps me to see what things are going well, what actions on my part are having the effect I want, what’s selling, and so on. A spiritual year-end review is a lot like that. A way to look at what worked and what didn’t, what we saw coming and what we missed, what we created, mostly, and how we created it. Every year we get better at this stuff! And to me, the year-end review is a part of that improvement.

How did I spend time?

One the of first things I think about is how I’ve spent my time. I like to make two columns on a page. In Column 1, I list the things that I most enjoy doing. Column 2 is for the things I’ve spent my time doing, from greatest to least. It’s eye-opening to compare these two lists. Ideally, I want the items in them to line up. I want the things I love most to be the things I spent the most time on. But it’s not always the case. Adjustments are needed. Frequently, because we backslide.

The dreams-come-true review

I like to look back at everything that has come into being this year, that wasn’t here the year before. These are all my dreams-come-true. Or rather, my focus given form.

The first thing that comes to mind is my great grandson William, first of his generation. Becoming a great grandparent is still settling into my psyche. It’s important and it’s huge. It will take a few years to fully process, I think. But I believe I’ve gone a level deeper in my spiritual understanding, and am beginning a new phase of growth. I’m leveling up.

And then there’s my magic shop. Way down deep in my subconscious levels, what I call my basement, the magic shop has been under construction for most of my adult life. I only just realize it now. (Realize – to make real. I just got that.) I’ve written books with magic shops in them, creating every little detail in print, and in my imagination, filing it all away for my future shop.

I loved the magic shop in Buffy. I’ve been to many real-life magic shops in my life. I’ve always loved them. But the last one I was in felt different. It felt like, “I want this. It’s time to create this.” It was just time. And I didn’t even know I wanted it until that day.

And so I created my online store, BlissBlog.shop and it is the beginning of this dream coming true. I want to build it up until it’s generating enough income to pay for a physical magic shop, where people can step into a whimsical, mystical world where magic is real. There will be readings, and massage, and Reiki, and a crystal cave for meditation and all the whimsical magical products you could imagine. Bells will tinkle and sing with every swirl of the air. Fairies will dangle, and witches will fly. It will smell heavenly, herbs drying all around, grown in our own gardens and greenhouses. Divine, mystical music will play in the background. Lisa Thiel, Lazarus, Reclaiming, Enya, Robert Gas, and so on. I want it to be an experience. There will be beautiful landscaping outside, including a labyrinth, waterfall, and koi pond. And the koi will also be available to purchase, but only to qualified buyers with sufficient habitat for them. Oh, my dreams are so big.

Last year, this idea wasn’t even fully formed. This year, BlissBlog.shop exists online. Its physical counterpart is still in the process of becoming, which is the very best part of creation.

The fish, oh, the fish!

Also born this year, literally, piles and piles of baby koi fish, and our third business, Serenity Koi. We’re having a blast caring for and raising these fish and we are learning the ropes as we go along. Just this week, we had to remove a fish from the pond, treat some wounds on her body, and contain her in an indoor, heated tank, which we had to build on the spot. It was a great challenge, but we met it. Are still meeting it, as this is an ongoing process. My husband built the filter system, set up heating, aeration and lighting on the new tank. Being fish farmers is a fascinating and rewarding new layer in our lives and we are finding surprise and delight in it every day.

Last year we had 7 adult koi fish, who’d been in our pond for 3 years. We enjoyed them very much.

Last year I told the universe I’d like some new revenue streams to open up for us, to take the pressure off my novels.

And of course, I tried to get and stay aligned as much as I possibly could. Because when you’re aligned with your Source, the things you have created by desiring them, can flow right in. One of my favorite ways of being aligned last summer, was sitting beside the pond, watching the 7 beautiful fish undulate in the water. Mesmerizing. Sheer appreciation, in those hours spent on the shore.

Appreciate: to increase in value. I appreciated my 7 fish into several hundred. Have I mentioned, this stuff really works?

The books, oh, the books!

I have put eleven new titles on the shelves that didn’t exist in 2018. That’s my biggest writing year ever. Granted, most of them were already-written stories whose rights reverted back to me from the publishers, magically, out of the blue. But several 2019 releases were new, too. And every single book is a shot at the moon. Any title I release could rocket straight to the stars at any time. And all of them provide the income that allows me to have the life I have, and to pursue all these other interests.

I am so grateful that I get to write novels for a living. I truly love this life.

And I have a movie this year! One of those books, Embrace the Twilight, is now an indie film, and that didn’t exist last year either.

My spiritual side

I have spent more time meditating this year than ever before. I’ve also done far more of my unique, tarot-slash-channeled readings for people than I ever dreamed I would do! It’s as good for me as it is for the clients, too! You have to be really aligned to read for people, and the more time we spend in that state of alignment with Source, the better everything in our lives becomes. That connection, that plugging in, is essential maintenance for our bodies, minds and spirits. It’s an information download. It’s a blast of physical well-being. It’s an emotional and spiritual restorative.

During times of connection, healing takes place, balance is restored, joy fills the heart, and all is truly well.

So, yes, meditation is one of those times of connection. Reading for people or for myself is a time of connection for me. Writing these blog posts is a time of deep connection. Writing my novels is, too. Basking in things that I love, just watching my fish, or sitting outside gazing at a beautiful view, or lying wrapped in my husband’s arms, or having a dance party with my granddaughters-these are times of perfect alignment. Pure positive energy. Joy. And that is alignment.

2020

2020 is going to look very different for us than 2018 did. A lot changed this year. Our Dozer ended his physical journey and emerged into wholeness. He’s with us but in a far different way now. We have two side businesses that we didn’t have before. We have new family members we didn’t have before, two granddaughters, 9 and 15, and a great grandson.

If 2019 brought us this much change, I can hardly imagine what our life will look like by the end of 2020. But I am about to start shaping that clay, by thinking about what I wand, right now.

I hope you had a blissful Thanksgiving, and are having a wonderful Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend!

Hey, cool that you’re here. I’m Maggie Shayne and I know about creating for a living. I’m a 23 year veteran of more than 60 novels, 25 novellas, an advice column and two CBS Daytime Soaps. I’ve worked for almost every major publisher in New York. In 2014 I went indie, and wrote and published some more while learning to run my own company.

I’m also a complete spiritual geek. All my life I’ve studied religions in search of “the truth,” only to find it’s something we make up as we go along. I’m a Wiccan High Priestess and Elder, Legal Clergy, Third Degree Reiki healer, Spellcaster, Tarot Card Reader, Omen Seer, half-assed shaman and aspiring yogini.

I’m a philosopher-slash-prophetess. I get insights and understanding when I meditate and then I journal it all, and eventually those insights and visions become my blog posts.

Above all else, I’m an avid student and teacher of The Law of Attraction.

I have figured out how to do this. For real. I have leveraged the most powerful force in the Universe to create the life and business of my dreams, and more is unfolding all the time. I am having so much fun that I can’t keep it to myself.

I want to share with you all the ways I’ve learned to literally create my own reality.

And if you join me here, you’re going to learn how to create yours, too.